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Barbados Psychiatric Hospital An Embarrassment to Barbadians Everywhere

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Condition at the hospital
Condition at the hospital

The government boast of a mantra it is about building a society. One measure citizens are able to measure growth in the society is how we implement initiatives to care for people. As the topic of the day continue to gain currency – something about building a $700,000,000 plasma […]gasification plant – have a look at the conditions Barbadians suffering from mental illness have to endure at the Psychiatric Hospital . Spare a thought for the employees.

Would you work in these conditions? Would you want your family placed in these conditions?

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43 responses to “Barbados Psychiatric Hospital An Embarrassment to Barbadians Everywhere”

  1. Caswell Franklyn Avatar
    Caswell Franklyn

    These patients are among the most vulnerable in this society and Government knowingly allows them to suffer under these horrid conditions. It that were not bad enough their diet is such that some of the patients are becoming emaciated. Mind you, this is in keeping with the way Government treats those who are least able to fend for themselves.

  2. MR.C Avatar
    MR.C

    Wow! that’s so very SAD to see human-beings being treated in such a manner. In my humble opinion, from the looks of things, I think that apart from the mental health issues. I honestly don’t think the conditions from what I have seen can insure proper health PERIOD. Are they being hosed down on the outside? Do the patients also use the outside when they need to go to the bathroom, which I haven’t seen? And anyone working at that place is very DESPERATE for a job. Because I don’t see anything apart from desperately in need of a pay check, or going above and beyond to help they fellow man. The Government SUCKS, and isn’t doing shit for those who are really in need. They have put on a very good front for the visitors. But don’t care shit for those who at some point in time was helpful in doing something for the betterment of Barbados, and are now treated even worse than animals. How do you THE GOVERNMENT feel riding around living large and neglecting those who are really unable to help themselves? I’m going to stop before I say a few other choice words for all those who has the power to make decisions in the building of a better, and healthier Barbados.
    One thing is really for sure. And all the bull shit talking needs to end, and those that truly care should step up and do something. PLEASE I AM NOT TRYING TO PROVE ANY RIOTING. Because that would only be setting you even farther back.
    To you who claim that you have the people’s best interest at heart. STEP UP, AND SHUT UP LONE ENOUGH TO REALLY DO SOMETHING FOR THOSE WHO TRULY NEEDS HELPING;
    ALLOW BARBADIAN TO ENJOY THE FRUITS THEIR LABOR, AND THE LOW WAGES AND SUFFERING THEY PARENTS AND GRAND PARENTS ENDURED. YOU DO MORE FOR OUTSIDERS, THAN FOR YOUR OWN RIGHT AT HOME. I REMEMBER AN OLD BAJAN SAYING :-” HOME DRUM BEATS FIRST;”

  3. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    Is this a trick somebody is playing on us? This just cannot be for real!

  4. David Avatar
    David

    @Donna

    The fact this post will not garner traction like the many political poppycock and religious issued say it all.

  5. William Skinner Avatar
    William Skinner

    @ David,
    It is not that the post may or not garner traction, the fact is that these conditions that you now choose to highlight, have been present for many years. We don’t want to address the fundamental problem in our society- that we have allowed the country to deteriorate , while we choose to prop up either the Barbados Labour Party or the Democratic Labour Party. Hence we have a deep polarisation in the society and those on the fringes or who can’t look after themselves, are left to the mercy of blundering politicians and their lackeys. That is why many things don’t get traction because the political agenda takes precedence over the national need.
    While we were bragging about how well the country was or was not managed, people were crying out about the treatment and conditions under which our only mental institution was operating. It did not matter. So to now come and believe that a few photos will be earth shattering ,is a bit ambitious. There is no shock because it is nothing new to those who know that the mental hospital has been in neglect for the past thirty or more years.

  6. Roebuck St. Economist Avatar
    Roebuck St. Economist

    No wonder these conditions exist. Yet we hearing shoite talk about Plasma Gasification nonsense and Cruise ship Sugar sweet. People cannot even get their income tax returns so who really they think they fooling. Certainly not rational thinking people.

  7. watchman Avatar
    watchman

    This Is just warning, to that Minister of Health from a poor black man, FIX that
    psychiatric Hospital NOW , you may end up there one of these days, don’t forget a MP went there already , and most of todays M Ps mentality need sense overhaul , the airlines has a policy on passengers who show mental disorder ,

  8. AutoBot Avatar
    AutoBot

    How about for a start showing the people who require the assistance of this facility some respect and stop allowing persons in the media to call it the ‘mental.’ You don’t see persons calling Verdun House anything other than it’s name…but hey that’s a facility for another segment of the population.

  9. watchman Avatar
    watchman

    @Auto Bot

    This DLP government ministers will disrespect in order to achieve the distance of their standard of living from the poor black people of Barbados because it is a reminder they want to forget . it is plain to see . picture this a P M that is 64 yrs old want to send home a 61 yrs old maid who work at a government office for 30+ years, her fate is now in the hands of a G G , who is 80+ yrs old , what the G G get in allowances per month, that maid don’t get a year, he can work pass 80 yrs but she can go home and suck salt

  10. Mark Jacobs Avatar
    Mark Jacobs

    Reblogged this on mark jacobs lives!.

  11. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    The DLP should take advantage of this political gift.

    Clean up and repair. Nuh major renovation project with brides and cost over runs.

    Just find an honest contractor to do the basics NOW. The families of the patients will be pleased.

    Then the next government can finance a major renovation and reconstruction with a multi million dollar budget.

  12. David Avatar
    David

    Many of the patients at the psychiatric hotel are people with a drug problem as well.

  13. Prodigal Son Avatar
    Prodigal Son

    We on BU keeping saying that this government has its priorities just wrong.

    They are big spenders.

    Knowing that the Psychiatric Hospital is in such bad shape, Maria Agard raise this matter in the House and the Minister of Health just sat there and tried to downplayed the concerns raised, should not these morons we have for a government instead of wasting money on David Thompson Football, should not this money be spent on repairs to this hospital.

    The representative for St John complained in the her feeble budget contribution that she is depressed that the St John Polyclinic still has not been finished after assurances from the PM that it would be finished by June 30th.

    What is the government doing with all the taxes being collected as well as the hundreds of millions the governor is printing every month?

  14. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    Mental illness can affect anyone.

    Lobby the government to at least do basic repairs immediately.

  15. David Avatar
    David

    @William

    Really?

    It was bad for that long?

  16. David Avatar
    David

    @Hants

    If Boyce is able to give up some of his golf time and show empathy with the staff and patients at the psychiatric hospital it would be seen in good light.

  17. Prodigal Son Avatar
    Prodigal Son

    Was he a golfer before 2008?

  18. Rick Avatar
    Rick

    Was he a golfer before 2008?

    NO and I have played with him many times.

  19. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    Boyce can spend more time on the golf course and give his competent staff freedom to solve problems.

    What I have seen in those videos requires simple repairs and renovations. Not complex engineering.

  20. St George's Dragon Avatar
    St George’s Dragon

    I expect we will find out that the Government has signed a $200 million deal for the demolition and rebuilding of the Psychiatric Hospital and not told us. It’s probably another Cahill project; they haven’t built one of those before either.
    Seriously, though, these conditions are scandalous. It would probably cost a lot to renovate the whole place but a few million would go a long way to sorting out some of the worst of it.

  21. watchman Avatar
    watchman

    @ prodigal Son
    He was not a golfer ,ne was unemployable , sharing a teacher salary

  22. Rick Avatar
    Rick

    Is that why the Durants golf course not repaying 2 million ‘loan’ given over 7 years ago?

  23. Rick Avatar
    Rick

    2 million ‘loan’ could be used at the Psychiatric hospital

  24. pieceuhderockyeahright Avatar
    pieceuhderockyeahright

    There is a stigma associated with mental disease that rivals that of AIDS and exceeds STDs.

    The thing is that what we fear man seeks to cope with in many ways, and generally ignorance and fear have gone hand in hand.

    In times afore, they used to ban the offenders from the environs of the tribe to live their lives like pariah and, unless you were a child of privilege, and there was a room in the tent or the castle where “shame of the loins of the liege and lord or all he surveyed” could be locked away, the unknown malady was shunned.

    Leeches and lobotomies and other Shamanistics practices of equally mad, though acceptably, educated men, predecessors of men like Freud and Jung used to recommend the boring of a hole in the head and ingrunce like that ( not to be confused with lessening inter-cranial pressure)

    The point that the olde man want to say is that whereas civilized countries have been through these stages, we in Bulbados, are still very much in the mid ages as it relates to the treatment of and the prevalent stigma of mad menses at the Green Gates Hotel.

    Poor John, he special, causing he really dont care to much bout nobody, as his days at, and rise from his beginnings at Banks will attest.

    But John is only one man and wider afield we have an entrenched ethos where even if you have a mental breakdown, you is forever going to be called a “madman”

    As long as the gates and walls and the bars in front of the institution are painted every year, we Bajans are content to believe that everything is ok behind the walls but this has been the case at our Green Gates Hotel for over 60 years.

    Rotting a little bit at a time with successive administrations just leaving the place to its own devices.

    Watchman said it very clearly when he indicated that we have had an MP resident there and Boyce should take an interest in the job that we are paying him and the other dufusses $17,000 a month to ef up the system.

    We just do not care, we have become a nation of people whose attitude is “that problem is at your house, not mine” and the only time we really give a shyt* is when a fellow get way and kill one uh we family en ting”

    We no longer, if ever, have any pride in the tasks that we are appointed to do, We just liked the photoshoot, with the Governor General and for the rest of our 5 year term, we jes chilling it

    And it is not just the minister, it is all of us who jes doan give a shyt*

  25. SuckaBubby Avatar
    SuckaBubby

    Someone said a political gift.This is the fruit of political gifting.Renovating the hospital alone wont solve the problem.Its not about buildings, its how you prioritize citizens according to their need matched with their inherent ability to fulfill that need.This is no different to the disabled.No serious visionary action but political talk at mental health month and disabled month .Time for the tax coffers to work according to needs of the priority citizens: the disabled, the hospitalized and the elderly.

  26. David Avatar
    David

    We are more than an economy.

  27. watchman Avatar
    watchman

    @ Piece
    The person was rush to a private place already cause after having a hard time getting up and still did not know where /was if Timbuktu or Barbados or in St Peter as a child, has started to show up

    Any how I am here trying to get some thing done about a watercourse for Mr. Blackman despite what happen Blackman shall Protect his home with in his boundary

  28. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    @SuckaBubby,

    Politicians in Barbados are motivated to act mostly for political gain.

    You want action show them how they might get reelected.

  29. SuckaBubby Avatar
    SuckaBubby

    Hants July 30, 2015 at 9:41 PM #

    Thats why we are where we are and will remain there until someone has the gumption to do otherwise.If I were a politician I would seriously weigh the pros and cons to that approach.Barbados cannot continue like this.Politicians can fool whom they care to.The clock is ticking for this place.Then there will be no return.

  30. FearPlay Avatar
    FearPlay

    Rick July 30, 2015 at 6:35 PM #
    Was he a golfer before 2008?

    NO and I have played with him many times.

    Wow! Someone brave enough to finally admit that this kind of thing really goes on. I hope the “playing with” was not the type that allegedly went on between a non-leper and a pm.

  31. FearPlay Avatar
    FearPlay

    Now tell me, why in the name of the Almighty is the main stream media unable to highlight these kinds of things and publish photographs like the ones above? And don’t fool yourself, there are dozens if not hundreds of other matters that never see the light of day in the media. Instead, we get column after column of trivia every week and page after page of sports, but nothing of substance to save this country from itself.

  32. David Avatar
    David

    @Fearplay

    It is not a sexual issue. It does not sell newspapers, it is not a headline grabber.

  33. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    @David,

    We were socialized to treat “mad people” as outcasts and “Jenkins” as a place to hide them.

    In recent years we have been educated enough to understand that mental illness can affect anyone and mental patients should be treated with respect and properly cared for.

    What I see in those photos is revolting.

    Surely the Government can find a few hundred thousand dollars to repair the critical parts of the buildings.

  34. Anthony Avatar
    Anthony

    This sounds like Barbados

    If Puerto Rico is going down, it could start this weekend.

    Puerto Rico on Saturday could go into default on a chunk of its $72 billion debt.
    That’s when the island owes hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of payments on bonds issued by a number of the island’s government agencies.

    The question is which ones will and will not get paid out.

    A likely “not” is a $58 million payment on Puerto Rico’s Public Finance Corporation (PFC) debt. Earlier this month bondholders were told that funds had not been transferred to the trustee responsible for making the payment.

    “The government likely wants to use the PFC payment as a sort of trial balloon to see how creditors react and hope that some of the bondholders will be scared into providing them with some relief,” analysts at Eurasia Group said in a recent note.

    Puerto Rico’s government at the end of June sounded the alarm that its debt burden had become far too large for it to handle. The island’s economy has contracted in every year but one since 2006. Wages are stagnant, the population has shrunk over the past decade by around 7%, and the country’s unemployment rate has topped 12%.

    Investors were shocked by the announcement. Even “bond god” Jeff Gundlach of DoubleLine Capital had previously said the island could restructure its general obligation bond debt payments and get investors about $0.80 cents on the dollar.

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/puerto-rico-going-down-could-152255708.html

  35. FearPlay Avatar
    FearPlay

    And @Hants, that money could be easily realized by sending fewer delegation members to the many jaunts that our ministers (including the pm) are happy to attend with increasing frequency. Conferences that don’t amount to a row of pins as far as results are concerned. Conferences that the paying public never get a full or partial report on what was said, done or will be done. It should be public knowledge how much money is spent in travel and per diem by these free loaders but that would be too much to expect from our local media I suppose.

  36. David Avatar
    David

    The jaunts overseas afford the travelers the opportunity to experience the creature comforts of a four or five star hotel, shop, rendezvous with outside women etc. Don’t forget the per dimes!

  37. Colonel Buggy Avatar
    Colonel Buggy

    Then we have a complex like this ,abandoned and will soon go into decay, when it could be refurbished and adapted to take, if not all, some of the load off the long- expired- date Psychiatric Hospital.
    http://i.imgur.com/ApLyFAI.jpg?1

  38. bookworm Avatar
    bookworm

    Do the patients have the vote? Could explain the prioritisation question.

  39. Colonel Buggy Avatar
    Colonel Buggy

    bookworm August 1, 2015 at 12:31 PM #
    The elderly in our community have the vote. But this does not give them any priority, after being, in many cases, hand lifted to the polling stations on election day, but when a hurricane comes a-calling, the same political leeches do not give two frigs about the elderly anymore. That is we culture.

  40. Harriett Avatar
    Harriett

    Some of the doctors and nurses are very rude. They don’t treat the patients with any respect. If you need a type written letter the secretary for one of the doctors, she is more than rude, she take like one hour to type a letter, and she hand it to you but dont say one word to you. I find that’s the culture with many government workers, they think they are so special and next to god that they dont have good customer skills. This woman take so long to type a letter, because they still have clerk typist. They dont use computers to do the typing and then print it out. They still using those Remington typewriters.

  41. Harriett Avatar
    Harriett

    If or when the hospital is awarded any money, only the doctors and nurses offices will be refurbished, the wards will not get any better. Some of the funds will go in bonuses and pay raises. They need good staff that will treat the patients with respect. The lower staff like the janitors and cooks, they friendly, but the female doctor, she comes in like 2 hours late, you have to sit and wait for her, and when she come in she close her office door for another hour. They need more doctors or mental health professionals that can diagnose and release people. The only good thing is some of these rude people retire at 60, but some still work way after 60 years old.

  42. David Avatar
    David

    Have been hearing some unflattering reports about service from the hospital, hopefully Senator Franklyn can use what influence he has to implore staff to treat people as they would want to be treated.

  43. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    Nothing to doubt. Patients with mental problems are not considered fully human.

    Why one of them recently died in police custody and the investigation seems to be on some back burner with the stove turned off.

    Was waiting to hear if the the parents were given permission to march but I heard nothing.

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